activity 3: Tastebud Tickler You will need: Fruit pastilles Jelly beans or similar fruit-flavoured sweets A blindfold A glass of water each What to do: In Pairs: Put a blindfold on one person. The second person should give a fruit pastille to the blindfolded person. Try and guess the flavour of the fruit pastille. How easy is it? Have a sip of water to clear the taste if you're trying different colours. Switch over, but this time the taster has to hold their nose as well. Now try and guess the flavour. Not easy, is it? What's happened! Our senses of taste & smell are strongly linked. We can only detect four different tastes - sweet, salty, sour and bitter - and much of what we know as "flavour" is a combination of taste with smell. A good example of this is to think how food tastes very bland when you have a cold (and a blocked nose) - it's because the "smell" part of the flavour is missing! More Get your friend to keep holding their nose. Then substitute in a bit of rock salt, a wedge of lemon or some of those disgustingly flavoured vegetable jelly beans and see if your friend notices. From Sensation, a science centre based around the senses in Dundee.
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